1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to shared medium data transmission networks. More particularly, the invention relates to the use of forward error correction coding in Ethernet networks.
2. Background
Ethernet is one of the most common digital networking technologies. Specified in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard 802.3, the technology has a large installed base of compatible network devices. (The 2000 edition of the IEEE 802.3 standard is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.) Ethernet technology continues to evolve, with newer and faster variants, such as the Gigabit Ethernet, providing network speeds of 1 Gigabit per second.
For several decades Ethernet has been widely used in local area networks. More recently, Ethernet has been used with increasing frequency in metro and other wide area optical network applications, including passive optical networks (PONs). In the wide area network applications, signal attenuation and link budget constraints grow in importance because of the distances involved and because of the optical power splitters that may be used along a link between a transmitter and a receiver.
At some point along the link, a signal may be attenuated and distorted to such a degree, that the information it carries cannot be extracted because of the limited sensitivity of the receiver, noise in the propagation medium, signal source-related noise, such as inter-symbol interference and mode partition noise, and other sources of noise, attenuation and distortion. But long before this point is reached, the Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) of the signal deteriorates and the bit error rate (BER) of the signal increases beyond what can be tolerated in a typical application.
Forward Error Correction (FEC) is one method for improving the BER of a received signal with low SNR. FEC is a coding technique that uses additional, i.e., redundant or parity-check, symbols as part of a transmission of a digital signal sequence through a physical channel. It is a species of error control codes. But, because of the presence of sufficient redundancy, when errors corrupt the received signal, the receiver not only recognizes the errors, but also corrects the errors without requesting retransmission. In practice, the improvement in the BER achieved through the use of FEC is known as coding gain.
Adding FEC capability to a legacy Ethernet network may cause errors in the Media Access Control (MAC) layer of the non-FEC capable (i.e., legacy) network elements. Moreover, applying FEC only to the payloads of the packets would not affect link budget constraints because packet headers, carrying destination information and frame boundary fields of the packets would not benefit from the improved BER of the payloads. On the other hand, applying FEC separately to the headers and separately to the payloads can make the headers unrecognizable to the non-FEC network elements.
What is needed, therefore, is a method for improving BER for a given link budget or, conversely, for increasing the link budget for a given BER, on networks with non-FEC-capable legacy network elements that are compatible with the Ethernet standard.